Newly re-elected Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan is proving to be just as repressive as Africa’s male predecessors. Photo: Facebook
Peaceful people are the most dangerous when provoked. They endure quietly, they absorb pain with astonishing patience, and they forgive easily until endurance turns into awakening.
History has proved, time and again, that when peace-loving people finally decide that “enough is enough,” their uprising is not chaotic; it is organised, purposeful and unstoppable.
Tanzanians have long been known as one of Africa’s calmest and most orderly societies.
From Julius Nyerere’s ujamaa socialism to their present-day democratic calm, they have carried themselves with restraint, humility and grace. But beneath this calm lies a quiet dignity, one that should never be mistaken for weakness.
Today, that dignity has been tested.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan, once celebrated as a symbol of continuity and moderation, now faces a tide of discontent from citizens who feel betrayed, marginalised and unheard.
The rising cost of living, growing unemployment, suppression of dissent and the re-emergence of state intimidation have eroded the goodwill that once surrounded her presidency.
Tanzanians are patient people, but patience is not infinite. What we are witnessing is the slow unravelling of a social contract built on trust and silence.
The government’s heavy-handedness, its apparent indifference to people’s struggles, and its tendency to stifle criticism are all pushing citizens toward a familiar breaking point.
History warns us: when peaceful people are cornered, their rebellion is neither random nor fleeting. It is total.
Ask the Britons what happened when they pushed the Mt Kenya too far. For decades, the British Empire dismissed the quiet resilience of these people as harmless. They saw them as obedient farmers and docile subjects of the Crown. But in the stillness of their suffering, the seeds of rebellion were being planted.
The Mau Mau uprising was not born out of hatred. It was born out of humiliation.
When land was stolen, traditions mocked and lives devalued, patience found its limit. The region organised in secrecy, forged unity in hardship and rose with a purpose that even the Empire’s might could not suppress. By the time the British realised the depth of resistance, it was too late. The fire had spread.
This is the lesson that autocrats and opportunists across Africa refuse to learn: peace is not submission; it is restraint.
The quiet of the masses is not consent; it is a waiting room for justice. And when the waiting ends, change arrives with the force of history behind it.
President Suluhu’s government would do well to remember that leadership is not about managing silence but nurturing trust. Tanzania’s people have tolerated economic hardship and political manipulation because they love their country and fear instability. But if that love is mocked and that fear is weaponised, even the gentlest citizen becomes a force of revolution.
In every society, the line between peace and resistance is drawn by dignity. When dignity is denied, when citizens are treated as mere subjects rather than sovereigns, even the most peaceful hearts begin to beat with rebellion.
Tanzanians have watched as leaders enrich themselves while villages languish in poverty.
They have seen promises of reform turn into slogans of control. They have witnessed power drift from public service to personal interest.
The tragedy of African politics is that many leaders misread the patience of their people as permission to exploit them.
But those who study the currents of history know that true revolutions often rise not from violence but from violated peace.
The same spirit that moved the Mau Mau through the forests of Aberdare, Nyambene and Mt. Kenya, that inspired the Sudanese to topple Bashir, that drove South Africans to dismantle apartheid, that same spirit … lives across the continent. It waits quietly in the hearts of men and women who believe that freedom is sacred, that justice is non-negotiable and that no ruler, however powerful, can own a people’s destiny.
President Suluhu wasted an opportunity to change the course. It is probably not too late.
She can choose humility over hubris, dialogue over dominance and service over control.
But if she does not and continues to push Tanzanians against the wall, then history will once again play its ancient tune: the people will organise and the people will win.
Because the power of the peaceful lies not in their noise but in their resolve.
When they finally rise, they rise not to destroy but to restore balance, to reclaim the moral order that power has corrupted. And when they do, no amount of repression, propaganda or police force can stop them.
Let the lesson be clear: never mistake silence for surrender. Never confuse patience for passivity.
The quiet before the storm is not the end of resistance. It is its beginning. In the end, it is always the same story. The oppressor believes she is in control until she isn’t. The people endure until they rise. And the peaceful, when finally pushed to the wall, always win.
Gitobu Imanyara is a human rights and pro-democracy lawyer and former member of the Kenyan and Pan African parliaments.
Follow him @GitobuImanyara